Rodeo Santa Fe

One of my AMerican roommates here, Kara, loves a type of Mexican music called Banda. I thought I had heard of all types of Mexican music/dancing, but I found out I was mistaken when I met Kara and learned of her love for this type of music. It has a very distinctive sound that, according to Wikipedia's information on Banda, is brass based. Also Wiki tells me that it is very recently popular as of the 1990s and it is a mixture between Mexican and German polka music!!
Loving this kind of music, Kara wanted to share it with me and our other roommate so she had been planning for a week to take us to a place called Rodeo Santa Fe, which she had been to a few years ago and is known for it's live bands and live rodeo in an adjacent room. Josie, our host sister, described it as a place of La Raza, which literally means "The Race" and perhaps was supposed to mean something else in that context. Since she contrasted it with another banda place which she described as freson, or classy, I would think she meant Rodeo Santa Fe is the opposite of classy, more real, where the locals go.

So we went and there sure were no fresas (people who are freson). Just your average Mexican dancing their heart out with their sweetheart. The first thing that strikes me about the dance is how close the couples are to one another. Not just because they are close and there is "no room for Jesus," as I've heard said among some religious circles, but because you wouldn't think they could be that close while dancing to the lively beat of banda. But they do. And it's beautiful. It's also striking how it looks really simple, but they jazz it up in the funnest, most unexpected ways. Like dipping the woman here and there, moving their hips or legs in a slightly different direction...the really advanced people do all sorts of gymnastics with their partners (which we witnessed a little bit of last night). But the basic step is easy enough that my friends and I could pick up on it without too much trouble...

I also witnessed a type of music and dancing called Duranguense. I think this kind of dancing fascinated me more than the Banda actually. I guess the music is even more recent than banda, it has more percussion and a faster beat, and it originated in Chicago among immigrants from the Mexican state of Durango!! NPR has an article with sound bytes to listen to. As for the dance, I can't even start to describe it. Check out a You Tube video on the right.